RUSH: Chama, New Mexico. This is Dave. Great to have you on the program. Hello, sir.
CALLER: Hello, Rush. I’m wondering why this Obama is being touted as so big when all he did was win against another Democrat. He has all his cronies a couple days ago, he pays off all of these union cronies for the November election. He coulda took that $26 billion and turned it over to a voucher program where these kids would get an education. And then he has a GMC plant built in Mexico and a battery plant in Korea.
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: I love the autoworkers. I wonder how they love this.
RUSH: Well, that’s a lot to chew on here. As far as Colorado is concerned, again it’s the media, and of course, Tim Kaine, The Eye, Democrat National Committee chairman, all’s right with the world now. Hey, we got the mo now, we got the mo ’cause our guy — it was historic last night, folks, if you haven’t heard, let me give you some breaking news. For the first time in the history of the United States a sitting president endorsed an incumbent Senate candidate who won. This is historic. We’re told by the Politico and the Democrat National Committee today this is historic, and it hasn’t happened before. That’s how it’s being treated. This means everything is cool for the Democrat Party. Never mind the fact the opponent was endorsed by Clinton, never mind that the guy endorsed by Obama was essentially running against Obama, against big government, against spending, running as a non-liberal, as a Democrat. And never mind the fact that the historic winner, the first incumbent — I mean this is the way I’m reading it — the first incumbent to ever win having been endorsed by a sitting president says he does not want that sitting president to campaign for him in the real election in November. And yet the Democrat Party and the partisan-controlled media is having a big party today. They have rebounded.
As for stimulus money and Obama funding vouchers for education, Obama ended a voucher program for minority kids in Washington where they were able to attend a private school, same private school that his kids go to when they’re not in Spain or off at summer camp. Obama wants teachers in inner city schools that are pathetic to have jobs. That’s more important because kids don’t vote. The teachers do. The kids will eventually vote ’cause they’re not going to have anything other than what they get from government. Now, I don’t know, will this Mexican plant be union? Where Obama’s gonna build some GM cars, will it be a union plant, UAW? I don’t know. I’m not sure. I doubt it. Does the UAW have a local in South Korea where the battery for the Volt is going to be made?
And remember, I had to issue a rare correction yesterday, folks. I am so rarely wrong. I mean my accuracy rating, I’m documented to be almost always right 99.6% of the time and I made a mistake yesterday. I was talking about the fact that government workers don’t produce anything and I irritated a lot of government workers in the Defense Department. I later smoothed that over. But I was wrong when I said that government workers don’t make anything. Government workers make the Chevrolet Volt. Batteries made in North Korea, parts made in Mexico and who knows wherever else. Subsidies to buy the Volt from Obama and Washington.
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RUSH: I erred yesterday, I said federal workers don’t make anything, they do, they manufacture the Volt. If the Chevrolet Volt does not sell, nobody will lose their job because of it. Instead the rest of us will be taxed to pour even more money into it because Obama will not be allowed to fail. The Volt is Obama. I mean, he didn’t originate the thing, it predates Obama’s arrival, but he has put his stamp on it. The Volt is the sign of Obama’s future, the future Obama wants. If it doesn’t sell we’re going to be taxed to spend even more money on this thing to make it look like it has succeeded. The reason that it’s not market oriented, it’s directed by political forces who embrace a failed economic plan.
In the private sector, if you come up with a multibillion-dollar lemon, you suffer the consequences, you go out of business. You lose your job, you declare bankruptcy and, blah, blah, blah, blah, and the government keeps some of that money. They keep trying to force their way. The private sector recoups, rearranges, changes course, and responds to the market.
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RUSH: Paul somewhere in Iowa, great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello, sir.
CALLER: Hey, Rush, I’m one of your many TAs out here in the field. It’s an honor to speak with you.
RUSH: Thank you very much, sir.
CALLER: Just wanted to say, yesterday you had a gentleman call in, sounded like he was a uniformed member of the military in the acquisition and procurement —
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: — arena.
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: I wanted to take you to task on saying that the government employees don’t really produce anything.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: I wanted to give you a different perspective on that. I’m a retired naval flight officer turned program manager in the defense industry and I can tell you I’ve been doing that for about 12 years and I can tell you, every program I’ve had, there are periodic reviews that you go through, systems requirement review, preliminary design review, critical design review, that sort of thing, where the two industry and government comes together to formally review, and in all cases it’s this enormous group of government people descend upon our facility, and my team’s outnumbered six, eight, sometimes ten to one, and there are good folks in there. You know, I’d put it at about 10% come and contribute and that sort of thing, but the rest eat our doughnuts and go home, and it was always very frustrating as a taxpayer to see that and wonder what the heck contribution I’m making here. I mean you’ve hired us to build this device for you, and then you stand up this army of federally funded individuals who, from my perspective and from what I could tell, contribute little or nothing, time and time again. So as usual, you were right on the money with your analysis there.
RUSH: Thank you very much. I always appreciate members of the audience riding to the rescue.
CALLER: (laughing) Yeah, it seems you really needed it there. And I’ll tell you, along the same lines is the notion, you know, you always hear the stories about the $700 hammer, toilet seat, whatever it is. What they never say, though, is that the requirements levied on the contractor are oftentimes so ridiculous that you have to overdesign the device and, of course, that drives cost.
RUSH: Right. Yeah, a $600 dollar toilet is because federal workers made it that expensive.
CALLER: Right. And in one case I had a program where a blade antenna had to withstand a 60G impact. What sense does that make? I mean it was just nonsensical, the aircraft can’t withstand that.
RUSH: I was going to say, what aircraft withstands 60Gs?
CALLER: Right, exactly, no human can withstand that but yet —
RUSH: A blade antenna has to be able to withstand 60Gs?
CALLER: Yeah. So you had to overdesign that antenna to match that requirement, and it of course will drive costs.
RUSH: Yeah. No doubt about it. Look, I’m glad you called. I really appreciate it, Paul. Thanks very much. Just ask Apple about antennas. (laughing) One of the Apple iPhone hardware design guys left, and people are bandying about a bunch of rumors that he might have been forced out because of the Antennagate problem, but Apple says there was no Antennagate problem, the guy was in trouble before. I don’t really know. I can’t remember his name. But, anyway, let me tell you this about the iPhone antenna problem. They just launched in 17 or 20 countries in the last couple of weeks. Have any of you heard of a single problem reported with the iPhone antenna in any of those countries, hmm? Mark Papermaster is who no longer is with Apple, but have you heard of anybody complaining about an antenna problem in any of the other countries the iPhone recently was placed on sale? I haven’t. No, if they had you’d have understood it because the American media woulda jumped on it. The anti-Apple media woulda jumped right on it. You haven’t heard anything about it at all.